CLI Printing Press is a tool that creates Go command-line clients, Claude Code skills, and MCP servers for APIs and websites by studying their documentation and existing integrations. It is intended for AI agents and developers who need token-efficient command-line access to services and compound queries. The catalogue entries are skills, instructions, plugins, settings, and a hook related to using the generated tools and the press.
Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx skills add mvanhorn/cli-printing-press --skill printing-press-amendgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-pressWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/printing-press-amend)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/printing-press-amend"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/printing-press-amend/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/printing-press-amend"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/printing-press-amend.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Socket pass
- Snyk fail
- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 3 findings, up to high
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- high Prompt Injection · line 50 Hidden instructions were detected in comments or invisible text. These could contain malicious directives. Manual review is recommended.Fix: Audit all comments and invisible characters. Remove any instructions that direct the agent to perform unauthorized actions. Use plain, reviewable content.
- high Tool Misuse · line 612 Tool parameters are crafted to achieve unintended or unsafe behavior. Parameter abuse can bypass intended safety checks (e.g. shell=True, --force, dangerous glob patterns).Fix: Validate all tool parameters against an allowlist. Reject dangerous parameter values (shell=True, --force, -rf /) and use safe defaults.
- medium Tool Misuse · line 810 Tool defaults are unsafe or overly permissive (e.g. disabled TLS verification, no authentication, world-writable permissions). Unsafe defaults widen the attack surface.Fix: Override unsafe defaults with secure settings (verify=True, auth required, restrictive permissions). Review and harden all tool configurations.
What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00222 | $0.13455 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00111 | $0.06728 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00044 | $0.02691 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00022 | $0.01345 |
Grade A, and why
printing-press-amend scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Makes network callslowCapability
Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.
# preflight's TTL cache: amend is low-frequency, so the bounded curl + go-list How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 918 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
/printing-press-amend
Turn a dogfood session into a PR for a printed CLI in the public library.
/printing-press-amend # auto-detect target CLI from session
/printing-press-amend superhuman # explicit short name
/printing-press-amend superhuman-pp-cli
/printing-press-amend "$PRESS_LIBRARY/superhuman"
This skill lives in this repo (the machine) and acts on a printed CLI in the public library. It is sibling to /printing-press-publish (adds a new CLI), /printing-press-polish (improves a CLI pre-publish), and /printing-press-retro (reflects on the machine itself). None of those cover post-publish CLI amendments driven by real-session friction.
The artifact this skill produces is semantically a "patch" (in the git/PR sense), tracked by the public library's .printing-press-patches/ directory (one file per patch). Inline // PATCH(...) source comments are optional navigation aids when they make a customized site easier to grep. The slash-skill name is amend to disambiguate from the existing cli-printing-press patch binary subcommand (which AST-injects pre-defined features — different mechanism, different intent).
Setup
Before doing anything else:
# min-binary-version: 4.0.0
# Derive scope first — needed for local build detection
_scope_dir="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || echo "$PWD")"
_scope_dir="$(cd "$_scope_dir" && pwd -P)"
# Prefer local build when running from inside the printing-press repo.
_press_repo=false
if [ -x "$_scope_dir/cli-printing-press" ] && [ -d "$_scope_dir/cmd/cli-printing-press" ]; then
_press_repo=true
export PATH="$_scope_dir:$PATH"
echo "Using local build: $_scope_dir/cli-printing-press"
elif ! command -v cli-printing-press >/dev/null 2>&1; then
if [ -x "$HOME/go/bin/cli-printing-press" ]; then
echo "cli-printing-press found at ~/go/bin/cli-printing-press but not on PATH."
echo "Add GOPATH/bin to your PATH: export PATH=\"\$HOME/go/bin:\$PATH\""
else
echo "cli-printing-press binary not found."
echo "Install with: go install github.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/v4/cmd/cli-printing-press@latest"
fi
return 1 2>/dev/null || exit 1
fi
# Resolve and emit the absolute path the agent must use for every later
# `cli-printing-press` invocation. `export PATH` above only affects this one
# Bash tool call; subsequent calls open a fresh shell and resolve bare
# `cli-printing-press` against the user's default PATH, where a stale global
# can silently shadow the local build. The agent captures this marker and
# substitutes the absolute path into every later invocation.
if [ "$_press_repo" = "true" ]; then
PRINTING_PRESS_BIN="$_scope_dir/cli-printing-press"
else
PRINTING_PRESS_BIN="$(command -v cli-printing-press 2>/dev/null || true)"
fi
if ! command -v go >/dev/null 2>&1; then
echo ""
echo "[setup-error] Go toolchain not found."
echo ""
echo "This Printing Press flow runs Go-based build or validation commands."
echo "Install Go 1.26.6 or newer from https://go.dev/dl/, then verify with:"
echo " go version"
echo "Then re-run this skill."
echo ""
return 1 2>/dev/null || exit 1
fi
echo "PRINTING_PRESS_BIN=$PRINTING_PRESS_BIN"
_pp_semver_lt() {
if [ -z "${PP_SEMVER_A:-}" ] || [ -z "${PP_SEMVER_B:-}" ]; then
echo "[setup-error] semver comparison inputs are missing." >&2
return 2
fi
awk -v a="${PP_SEMVER_A:-}" -v b="${PP_SEMVER_B:-}" 'BEGIN {
split(a, x, "."); split(b, y, ".")
for (i = 1; i <= 3; i++) {
if ((x[i] + 0) < (y[i] + 0)) exit 0
if ((x[i] + 0) > (y[i] + 0)) exit 1
}
exit 1
}'
}
_pp_go_version_norm() {
printf '%s\n' "${PP_GO_VERSION_INPUT:-}" | sed -nE 's/.*go([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)(\.([0-9]+))?.*/\1.\2.\4/p' | sed -E 's/\.$/.0/'
}
_pp_check_go_currency() {
_pp_go_installed="$(PP_GO_VERSION_INPUT="$(go env GOVERSION 2>/dev/null)" _pp_go_version_norm)"
_pp_go_required="$(PP_GO_VERSION_INPUT="$(go version "$PRINTING_PRESS_BIN" 2>/dev/null)" _pp_go_version_norm)"
PP_SEMVER_A="$_pp_go_installed"
PP_SEMVER_B="$_pp_go_required"
if [ -z "$_pp_go_installed" ] || [ -z "$_pp_go_required" ] || ! _pp_semver_lt; then
return 0
fi
echo ""
if [ "${GOTOOLCHAIN:-auto}" = "local" ]; then
echo "[setup-error] Go $_pp_go_required or newer is required by this cli-printing-press binary (installed: $_pp_go_installed)."
echo "GOTOOLCHAIN=local disables automatic toolchain downloads, so later Go quality gates would fail."
echo "Install Go $_pp_go_required or newer from https://go.dev/dl/, or unset GOTOOLCHAIN."
echo ""
return 1
fi
echo "[go-toolchain-old] Go $_pp_go_required or newer is required by this cli-printing-press binary (installed: $_pp_go_installed)."
echo "PRESS_GO_INSTALLED=$_pp_go_installed"
echo "PRESS_GO_REQUIRED=$_pp_go_required"
echo "Default GOTOOLCHAIN behavior may download the required toolchain during Go commands."
echo ""
return 0
}
_pp_check_go_currency || { return 1 2>/dev/null || exit 1; }
PRESS_BASE="$(basename "$_scope_dir" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sed -E 's/[^a-z0-9_-]/-/g; s/^-+//; s/-+$//')"
if [ -z "$PRESS_BASE" ]; then
PRESS_BASE="workspace"
fi
PRESS_SCOPE="$PRESS_BASE-$(printf '%s' "$_scope_dir" | shasum -a 256 | cut -c1-8)"
PRESS_HOME="${PRINTING_PRESS_HOME:-$HOME/printing-press}"
PRESS_RUNSTATE="$PRESS_HOME/.runstate/$PRESS_SCOPE"
PRESS_LIBRARY="$PRESS_HOME/library"
PRESS_MANUSCRIPTS="$PRESS_HOME/manuscripts"
PRESS_CURRENT="$PRESS_RUNSTATE/current"
_pp_check_disk_space() {
_pp_disk_warn_kb="${PRINTING_PRESS_DISK_WARN_KB:-3145728}"
_pp_disk_fail_kb="${PRINTING_PRESS_DISK_FAIL_KB:-524288}"
case "$_pp_disk_warn_kb$_pp_disk_fail_kb" in
""|*[!0-9]*) return 0 ;;
esac
_pp_disk_path="$PRESS_HOME"
while [ ! -e "$_pp_disk_path" ] && [ "$_pp_disk_path" != "/" ]; do
_pp_disk_path="$(dirname "$_pp_disk_path")"
done
_pp_disk_avail_kb="$(df -Pk "$_pp_disk_path" 2>/dev/null | awk 'BEGIN {
if ((getline header) <= 0 || (getline record) <= 0) exit
field_count = split(record, fields)
if (field_count >= 4) print fields[4]
}')"
case "$_pp_disk_avail_kb" in
""|*[!0-9]*) return 0 ;;
esac
if [ "$_pp_disk_avail_kb" -lt "$_pp_disk_fail_kb" ]; then
echo ""
echo "[setup-error] Critically low disk space on the Printing Press workspace volume."
echo "PRESS_DISK_PATH=$_pp_disk_path"
echo "PRESS_DISK_AVAIL_KB=$_pp_disk_avail_kb"
echo "PRESS_DISK_FAIL_KB=$_pp_disk_fail_kb"
echo "Free disk space or set PRINTING_PRESS_HOME to a volume with more room, then re-run this skill."
echo ""
return 1
fi
if [ "$_pp_disk_avail_kb" -lt "$_pp_disk_warn_kb" ]; then
echo ""
echo "[low-disk] Printing Press workspace volume is low on free space."
echo "PRESS_DISK_PATH=$_pp_disk_path"
echo "PRESS_DISK_AVAIL_KB=$_pp_disk_avail_kb"
echo "PRESS_DISK_WARN_KB=$_pp_disk_warn_kb"
echo "This flow may need several GiB for generated files, Go build cache, module downloads, or repository clones."
echo ""
fi
}
_pp_check_disk_space || { return 1 2>/dev/null || exit 1; }
mkdir -p "$PRESS_RUNSTATE" "$PRESS_LIBRARY" "$PRESS_MANUSCRIPTS" "$PRESS_CURRENT"
# --- Currency-floor check (standalone, fail-open) ---
# Hard-stop on binaries below the published supported floor so amend does not
# regenerate CLIs with since-fixed bugs. Repo checkouts build from source and
# are exempt. The floor is clamped to <= latest so a bad value cannot brick
# every install. Fetched fresh each run rather than reusing the printing-press
# preflight's TTL cache: amend is low-frequency, so the bounded curl + go-list
# cost is not worth its own cache here.
if [ "$_press_repo" != "true" ] && command -v curl >/dev/null 2>&1; then
_semver_lt() {
if [ -z "${PP_SEMVER_A:-}" ] || [ -z "${PP_SEMVER_B:-}" ]; then
echo "[setup-error] semver comparison inputs are missing." >&2
return 2
fi
awk -v a="${PP_SEMVER_A:-}" -v b="${PP_SEMVER_B:-}" 'BEGIN {
split(a, x, "."); split(b, y, ".")
for (i = 1; i <= 3; i++) {
if ((x[i] + 0) < (y[i] + 0)) exit 0
if ((x[i] + 0) > (y[i] + 0)) exit 1
}
exit 1
}'
}
_floor_installed=$("$PRINTING_PRESS_BIN" version --json 2>/dev/null | sed -nE 's/.*"version"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"([^"]+)".*/\1/p')
_floor_doc=$(curl -fsSL --max-time 5 \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/main/supported-versions.txt 2>/dev/null || true)
_floor_min=$(printf '%s\n' "$_floor_doc" | sed -nE 's/^min_supported=//p' | head -n 1)
_floor_reason=$(printf '%s\n' "$_floor_doc" | sed -nE 's/^reason=//p' | head -n 1)
_floor_latest=""
if command -v go >/dev/null 2>&1; then
_floor_latest=$(go list -m -json github.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/v4@latest 2>/dev/null | sed -nE 's/^[[:space:]]*"Version":[[:space:]]*"v?([^"]+)".*/\1/p' | head -n 1)
fi
if [ -n "$_floor_min" ] && [ -n "$_floor_installed" ] && [ -n "$_floor_latest" ] &&
PP_SEMVER_A="$_floor_installed" PP_SEMVER_B="$_floor_min" _semver_lt &&
! PP_SEMVER_A="$_floor_latest" PP_SEMVER_B="$_floor_min" _semver_lt; then
echo ""
echo "[upgrade-required] printing-press v$_floor_min is the minimum supported version (you have v$_floor_installed)"
echo "PRESS_REQUIRED_MIN=$_floor_min"
echo "PRESS_REQUIRED_INSTALLED=$_floor_installed"
echo "PRESS_REQUIRED_REASON=$_floor_reason"
echo ""
fi
fi
What ships with it
5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 11d ago First seen · 918 lines · 222 tokens per session scan A 84d5023d599a
printing-press-amend is a skill published in the GitHub repository mvanhorn/cli-printing-press (4,658 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 222 tokens to every session and 13,455 once invoked, about $0.0011 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
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